The Domino's logo is a good example of this. The logo uses Futura but to show the differences I have tried to mimic the logo on the right by using an adaptation of Futura called Futura condensed extra bold. This is basically Futura but bold and more condensed making the letters less geometrical, for example the letter 'o' is no longer a perfect circle. Even when using this adaptation of the font the designer has used manual kerning and leading to individualise the logo.
The Absolut Vodka logo also uses this alternative version of Futura for its logo with really tight kerning throughout the logo to make it individual to the brand.
Jessica Hische and her work on Wes Anderson's film Moonrise kingdom is good inspiration when looking at how people can adapt certain fonts to be more appropriate for certain things. I found this interview on the experience online (http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/moonrise-kingdom/). Jessica Hische was hired to create the font that would ultimately create the branding and titles of the film. Wes initially said he liked the font Edwardian and wanted that to be the initial base for ideas.
Wes said Edwardian was a font he liked but it was too formal and would be hard to see on smalled screens. So Hische began her initial sketches based on this. She tried with different weights of the font and even a monoweight version but it still looked too formal. After a few weeks Wes came back with the credits from a Claude Chabrol film called 'La Femme Infidèle'.
He had seen this font and said “This is more along the lines of what we want. What if we did these in your style, made it feel more ’60s American rather than ’40s French?”. Hische said she really liked this idea as the setting of the movie was a small village where they wouldn't of been very with the times so looking at older styles would be much more suitable. Eventually she produced a final product that really worked, it went thought a lot of little changes. She said "Certain letters got a lot more love than others. Wes’ favourite letter to criticise was the capital F and maybe, I think, the lowercase ‘r’ went through a lot of rounds". This is the final font she designed.
I really like this final font, I think when you look at the initial idea of Edwardian with all its extravagant swooshes it made me feel unsure of what the final product would look like. But this font somehow has just the right amount of detail without being overly formal and hard to read. Its really classy and works perfectly for the films branding.
Another great example of a graphic designer creating branding and fonts particularly for one source is Annie Atkins work on the film The grand Budapest hotel. I looked at the article on this on creative review (http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2014/march/grand-budapest-hotel). She was responsible for the graphic design on every prop in the film and the branding behind everything you see basically.
These are some bank notes she designed for the film. For inspiration she was given real artefacts from around the era and cultural area. Like real bank notes and stamps they would of used. Once all the designs were perfected she had to create the physical pieces. Atkins says in her interview that things were designed to look band new but printed in ways that they would of been at the time to make them more authentic, she had to typewrite letters and use pen and ink for some things. She then had to make everything look worn and used by using things like tea and hairdryers.
Above is a police report prop she designed.
She said that they didn't use a large number of different fonts in the design process as a lot of it was written by hand or on a typewriter to make it authentic looking. She said it was really interesting as they were designing things that would of been made before graphic designers even existed but Wes had been to the area it was set in and found examples of real hand painted signs and other great inspiration. For the main sign above she was given a reference image of an old hotel sign by Wes. She hand drew the letters with jaunty uneven serifs and odd kerning particularly between the a and n. She gave the design to the model makers and apparently they automatically thought the kerning was a mistake and tried to change it but were then told it was all part of the authenticity. Wes didn't want anything to look digitally produced, everything had to look real for the time of the movie.
I found the whole lengthy process Atkins went through to make everything look perfect really inspiring. I need to apply these same ideas to my work, I need to make sure I don't rush straight for the computer and spend a good amount of time hand rendering my typeface. I have come up with the idea I could trace the letters of Helvetica and then adapt the traced drawings to help with initial ideas for alterations and measurements.
Next I looked at the work by Geoff Mcfetridge on the film her. Geoff designed all the interfaces you see throughout the movie. I thought this would be more appropriate to my project as for his he uses Helvetica. I like the idea that even though the film is set in the future Helvetica is used, this shows he as a designer believes that the font will continue to be used in the future rather than dying out and becoming less loved. I share this belief.
I read an interview with Geoff about the designing of the interfaces (http://gizmodo.com/an-interview-with-geoff-mcfetridge-on-the-interfaces-fr-1526237090).
Geoff says in the interview that not even those who worked on the actual film knew how far into the future the film was set in as nobody knows the pace technology is developing at. Geoff's job was to predict how we would work and interact with our devices in the future and what that would physically look like. He designed the ios system design for the technology used throughout and also things like the type on the letters the main charecter writes in the film as part of his job.
Above shows an example of one of the 'handwritten' letters Geoff designed as part of the films props. All the handwriting was digitalised to look like in the future as part of this database you could type in different peoples handwriting to create digitally authentic looking letters.
Above is a film still showing one of the interface designs. You can see its pretty minimal with only two colours and Helvetica as the font. I think this is pretty similar to current design trends with obvious differences like the completely hands free idea, that you have to press no buttons you just control the device by talking to your operating system. I think this example kind of shows that Helvetica in the design world and even the futuristic design world is a 'stylish' font. So I need to explore the other ideas of style further to help me come up with far out ideas of fashion. This may include looking as fashion in clothes, architecture and different cultures.
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